AmeriCorps Service helps Students

 CalSERVES has After School programs all across California. Programs in Los Angeles have been seeing a lot of progress with students.

Students participate in STEM projects.

An AmeriCorps members serving in LA, Didier Mejia, shared this observation about AmeriCorps  service and the students in the program:

“One of the many students that I had a chance to work with caught my attention with his progress throughout the program. A 6th grader, he is bright kid who was eager to learn new stuff. I believe mathematics is an essential subject one must learn in order to succeed in any career, therefore I emphasized this with my students. He is now able to easily calculate large numbers in his head and works on Math a grade ahead of his classmates.”

A student engaged in learning about Science.

New CalSERVES VIP Blog

The Volunteer Infrastructure Project (VIP), a part of CalSERVES, has a new blog! Check it out. You'll be able to read about all the amazing work our AmeriCorps VIP Fellows are doing across the state of California.

http://calservesvip.blogspot.com/

VIP and Volunteers make a Big Impact in San Luis Obispo County

Wendy Lewis, the Associate Executive Director of the Food Bank Coalition

The AmeriCorps VIP program has definitely proven not only beneficial, but necessary for the Food Bank Coalition of San Luis Obispo County. Spread between two warehouses, the Food Bank only comprises of 23 paid employees, otherwise we gratefully rely on our pool of 400+ volunteers!

Our VIP fellows Stephanie Lossinsky and Megan Chicoine both handle our large database of volunteers, as they work with the volunteers and orchestrate opportunities for those who want to participate in the community. It is so important to nurture and establish positive, fun relations with the generous people who want to help the county, and Stephanie and Megan surely do that with great verve, leadership, and administration.

One of the core volunteer groups they look forward to working with is the vivacious and always entertaining 8th grade girls with Community Giving Back, which is a service-oriented program for youth that facilitates opportunities to attend camps and various educational programs. The 8th graders have been dubbed “The Fridays” since almost every Friday, between 4 and 7 girls join forces and tackle various tasks at the Food Bank warehouse in Paso Robles. Stephanie and Megan always look forward to when the girls come to the Food Bank because the Fridays complete the occasional dirty work—for instance, bagging onions for the Saturday distribution (sometimes there are a few grimy ones!)—with loads of laughter and cheery attitudes! They make sure that the Fridays know exactly how and who in SLO County they are helping.

It was really exciting during our "Have a Heart Food Drive" at Food 4 Less in February because the girls very excitingly gathered food from giving customers and even got to take turns dressing up as the amazing Food Bank mascot Sandie the Sandwich! Community Giving Back creator Kim Austin truly appreciates the relationship between the VIP Fellows Stephanie and Megan and the Fridays. All of them understand the value of service and enjoy the process of providing for the community.

Volunteers are VIP!

Lauren Serpa, CalSERVES VIP Leader

CalSERVES AmeriCorps VIP fellow Steven Goings with volunteers from BSU at CSU Monterey Bay.

The mission of the CalSERVES AmeriCorps Volunteer Infrastructure Project (VIP) is to increase the capacity of diverse non-profit and educational organizations to serve the highest-need children and families across the state. Our AmeriCorps members create effective volunteer infrastructure to serve needs that would otherwise be unmet.

In other words… we love volunteers! We do what we do at VIP because we know that every volunteer, every hour and act of service make a difference. We see the impact our members make in the lives of children and adults through community services, schools, universities, botanical gardens, food banks – at every one of our partner sites!

Many programs and projects that serve communities throughout the state depend solely on volunteer effort. Two of our AmeriCorps VIP members working with HandsOn Central California, Ashley Cole and Jonathan Munoz, coordinated one such project. By mobilizing 425 volunteers for their recent two-day event, Hope for the Holidays, they enabled 834 homeless school children and their families to celebrate the holidays with a hot meal, crafts, flu shots, entertainment (including Santa Claus himself!), and a wrapped gift for every child. Every one of the 425 volunteers made a difference to the hundreds of children and families who attended.

Team Kids, one of our partner sites in Irvine, understands that even children make a positive impact by giving their time. At one of their community outreach events, children gave their time by writing inspirational notes to sick children. Some children even volunteered to help deliver the notes. These young volunteers were engaged, and the sick children were encouraged by the volunteers’ time and care.

At VIP, we also know just how important it is to appreciate our volunteers. We value our volunteers and the impact they make every time they show up to give their time and their skills, and we like to make sure they know it! Many VIPs have made a point to appreciate the volunteers they have recruited in gestures or words of gratitude or in organized events. Alyssa “Zaylia” Pluss, an AmeriCorps VIP member serving at Aids Project East Bay, played a key role in organizing the First Annual Consumer (client) and Volunteer Appreciation Holiday Party: the organization’s first event geared toward appreciating and retaining volunteers. Alyssa remarks that “in the days following the party, I have noticed volunteers who did not previously know each other becoming friends, and many people have mentioned how uplifting the party was. We appreciated volunteers at the event by giving each one a certificate of appreciation and further appreciated two volunteers by presenting them with awards for ‘outstanding volunteer 2010.’ One volunteer, who is also a client, received an award for being an outstanding volunteer - this re-invigorated his participation in the organization while setting an example for others. In all, the event was a great success.”

Do you volunteer? Your time, your skills, and your consideration of others can make a huge impact.

Volunteer today!

Calistoga Afterschool Programs Honor Community Volunteers: Americorps Promise Fellows in Action

Cherri Alcantara & Sonia Ayala, AmeriCorps PROMISE Fellows in Calistoga, CA

Community volunteers are essential to our after school programs at Calistoga Elementary and Calistoga Junior Senior High Schools. Volunteers play various roles in order to support our students—they provide one-on-one tutoring, lead sports activities, lead a variety of clubs, and mentor our youth. In order to show gratitude and appreciation to our volunteers, the Americorps Promise Fellows at Calistoga schools—Sonia Ayala and Cherri Alcantara—coordinated a Volunteer Appreciation Dinner on Friday, May 14. 

 Volunteer receives certificate from PF Sonia Ayala

The Volunteer Appreciation was incorporated in the Calistoga After School Programs’ Think Tank and 8th Period & Beyond Annual Pot Luck Dinner. Families, staff, school administration, teachers, students, and volunteers were invited to the dinner. Families brought in delicious main course dishes such as tamales, enchiladas, pasta, salad, and pozole. The event started with a slide show of Calistoga After School activities this year. Sonia and Cherri gave a short welcome telling about their pleasure and enjoyment working with the volunteers. After the speeches, the volunteers received certificates of gratitude. Each volunteer also received a gift bag that included a personalized mug and a constructed wooden sculpture both made and decorated by the After School students. The Pot Luck Volunteer Appreciation Dinner culminated with desserts, raffles and door prizes. Children’s raffle prizes included a goody bag of books, games and various activities for summer activities.

A Volunteer shows an appreciation she received.

The event was truly a community collaboration. Sonia and other community members donated raffle items that helped fundraise money for the Volunteer Appreciation Dinner. Local businesses donated items from their stores as door prizes to our families. In addition, two local restaurants provided us discounts on the food purchased for the dinner. The Family and Volunteer Appreciation Dinner not only demonstrated the importance of community involvement and volunteerism for our after school programs, but also our ability to come together as a group. This shows our commitment to our community and brings together a vast representation of the cultures of Calistoga–Latino families, worldly retired intellectuals, leadership of both our schools, and our town.

PF Cherri Alcantera and a Calistoga Volunteer

AmeriCorps Members Make A Difference

Kathleen Chosa, CalSERVES Program Coordinator 

It’s hard to believe but we are already at the mid-point of the program year for most of our AmeriCorps members! Before we know it this program year will be done and we will be looking back at how our members measured up and the goals they accomplished.

We currently have 230 members serving in numerous locations across our state, north from the Sonoma and Napa County areas to the south of San Diego County. As of the end of January our members have served over 177,000 hours, making tremendous strides forward in serving the needs of children and families in some of California’s economically hardest hit communities. They have done so in a wide variety of ways such as developing and organizing on-going volunteer bases for non-profit organizations, offering one-on-one literacy tutoring to elementary school age children struggling to read, and providing 1st-8th grade at-risk students with safe educational/ enrichment/ mentoring after-school programs to attend, free of charge, Monday - Friday. 

Our AmeriCorps members in the CalSERVES, the California’s Promise, or the Volunteer Infrastructure Project (VIP) programs are truly measuring up, really "Making a Difference" in the communities in which they’ve dedicated their service.

A State Wide Training

Sara Sitch, Program Manager, CalSERVES

The AmeriCorps Volunteer Infrastructure Program and California’s PROMISE came together in mid-October for a statewide conference. Hosted at Asilomar Conference Center in Pacific Grove, the training offered multiple tracks for members and supervisors.

The conference kicked off on October 14, with keynote speaker Dr. Seth Pollack, Director of the Service Learning Institute at CSU Monterey Bay. As a Peace Corps volunteer in Mali in his twenties, Dr. Pollack learned first hand what it is to serve. Last year, while on a Fullbright Scholarship, Dr. Pollack reconnected with old friends and became reinvigorated by the power of service and learning to change the world. His address, “Elephants and Dung Beetles—Doing the Heavy Lifting Through Service for Social Change” was the perfect beginning to an exciting and educational three days.

The conference continued with trainings centered around volunteer management, event planning and facilitation, national service days, and on-the-job workshops. To underline the importance of service, AmeriCorps members also had the opportunity to participate in a beach clean-up and a greenhouse service project.

 On October 16, the conference culminated with a fantastic send-off by the Monterey Bay Aquarium, which offered AmeriCorps members and supervisors free admission for the afternoon. There, eighty conference attendees go to take in exhibits at one of the best aquariums in the world. Attendees were treated to the new seahorse exhibit and were able to catch a rare glimpse of a young white shark. But, even with the two new attractions, the jelly-fish display continued to be an all-time favorite.